


Sick at work

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Coming to work sick, F/M, It's just a head cold, Or maybe the flu?, Post-Canon, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13616880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: The Director is pretty bad at admitting when she's sick; Magnus is pretty good at getting her to take a break.





	Sick at work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emi_rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emi_rose/gifts), [BlueColoredDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueColoredDreams/gifts).



> After inspiring me to something dreadful this morning, the gang got me to write something cute, I suppose. Thanks to @weatheredlaw for [the original question](http://bluecoloreddreams.tumblr.com/post/170659238629), to @emi_rose for embellishing, and to @bluecoloreddreams for requesting a fic of the embellishments.
> 
> Not even remotely edited and I don't care.

The crud’s been going around the Bureau of Benevolence headquarters for a few weeks now, and despite the Bureau’s generous sick leave policy (“please go be sick somewhere else for the love of Pan”), folks keep coming in even when they shouldn’t.

So even though Lucretia can tell herself that she’s just tired, because honestly, she’s always tired, and that she has a sore throat because she’s been in too many meetings talking to too many people…. Well, when she starts shivering, just a little, even though her office is the same temperature it always is, she sighs. Then she coughs.

But she looks at the stack of papers — the endless stack of papers — on the desk in front of her, and she makes another cup of tea and goes back to work. She does try to keep the coughing to a minimum; eventually, though, as always her tireless assistant Alex (wearing a face mask, she notices) pops her head around the corner.

“Ma’am, are you sure…?”

“I’m fine,” she replies, though her voice is hoarse and she shakes just a little bit as she says it.

“You know it’s bad when you —”

Lucretia presses her lips into a firm line and draws a finger across her throat; Alex shrugs and heads back out to the reception desk.

It’s perhaps 10 minutes later, or maybe it’s an hour: she’s not sure, she just rested her head on the stack for a minute, couldn’t concentrate on the words on the pages as they sort of floated about. She startles back to herself at the sound of a booming voice coming through the door.

“Naw, I got this, don’t worry about it,” says Magnus as the door falls shut behind him and he stands in front of her, arms crossed. “You’re sick, Luce, gotta go home, go to bed.”

“”M fine,” she says, irritably, her voice even more gravelly than usual.

“Nope,” and he comes around the corner of the desk, pulls back her chair with a screech that makes her head hurt even more than usual, and starts to lift her out of it. She pushes him away; she feels weak as an infant, but she’s insistent.

“I am the Director of the Bureau of Benevolence, Magnus Burnsides,” she says, pulling herself as straight and tall as she can manage, “and I’m not going to be carried out of my office like a sack of potatoes.”

He sighs, but just holds out a hand for her to hold. She stands, wobbly, feeling the full force of this godawful, really why do people go to work when they’re sick and just get other people — oh right, maybe she should — and grabs his hand maybe a little tighter than she intended.

But she’s fine, it’s not that bad of a cold, everyone else has gone through it without too much; then again, none of them suffered Constitution drain in Wonderland, did they? She’s just going to walk slowly with Magnus out into the front hall and they’ll get back to her quarters. That’ll be nice, just drink some soup and take a nap….

Everything spins, and the last thing she sees is Alex’s eyes go wide.

The next thing she sees is Magnus, sitting on the floor cross-legged, whittling. She’s bundled in blankets so tightly she can hardly move, and she can barely smell the mug of hot lemon and honey on the side table, but she can see it steaming, just waiting for her. She sips at it slowly, stopping occasionally to cough.

“Drink that up,” he says. “Oh, and Taako’s sending Krav with a big pot of chicken soup.” (“Nobody gets to take her out but me, especially not some dumbass cold,” Taako had said, although he’d also sent along a bag of the trashy romance novels she likes.)

“You carried me, didn’t you?” she says peevishly. “After I asked you not to.”

“You could just say thanks, Luce.”

She harrumphs, with another cough in the middle, but she looks through the lemony steam at him, his big hand brushing wood shavings onto her clean floor, and she sighs.

“You’re welcome,” he says. “Now get some rest.”


End file.
